Out of the Box: a Memoir of an Adoptee

By Patricia Bauer Collins RN

After years of childhood curiosity, a woman adopted as an infant decides to find her birth mother. It took her years to finally decide to hire a “Search Angel.” She got her call only three days later—but she found out that her birth parents had already passed on. However, her birth mother’s husband was a joyful fount of information and treated her like his own lost daughter.

In Out of the Box: A Memoir of an Adoptee, author Patricia Bauer Collins shares her journey to discover her birth parents, as she faces new challenges yet undergoes a great deal of emotional growth. Patricia shares actual letters between her birth mother, Shirley, and Shirley’s mother and grandmother regarding “Shirley’s problem” when she was just twelve years old. Patricia also tells the story of how she was able to connect with her half-siblings and other relatives—something more exciting than she had ever imagined—even traveling to her Spanish ancestors’ 1842 family adobe outside Santa Barbara.

For Patricia, connecting with her origins and with her past made her realize that her ancestors were far more important to her than she had thought. Not only did she discover more about her history and the talents and skills she shared with them; she also discovered more about herself, being rewarded along the way with an astounding epiphany of connection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781532051012

Patricia Bauer Collins RN

Patricia Bauer Collins was born and raised in Southern California, and growing up as an adopted child, she often wondered about her birth mother. She began searching in 1992, and today she shares the challenging story about what she found. After discovering her biological history, Patricia realizes the importance and value of sharing her truth with mothers, adopted families, but especially adult adoptees who haven’t realized the value of finding their own biological history.

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Copyright © 2015 Patricia Bauer Collins, RN.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-5103-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-5102-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-5101-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021918216

iUniverse rev. date: 11/15/2021

Contents

Introduction

Preface

Part I

Chapter 1 A Bit of Background

Chapter 2 The First Few Months

Chapter 3 Two and a Half and Up

Chapter 4 Learning More about Life

Chapter 5 Genealogy and the Curious Graft

Chapter 6 Adolescence

Chapter 7 Marriage, Moving, and Motherhood

Chapter 8 Bridges Go up and Down

Chapter 9 Change, Changing, Changed

Part II

Chapter 10 North to Alaska

Chapter 11 Jump Start

Chapter 12 California Beach Christmas

Chapter 13 Hello and Goodbye

Chapter 14 My Most Frightening Experience

Part III

Chapter 15 Meeting Papa Joe

Chapter 16 Letters, Memories, and Questions

Chapter 17 Meeting My Sister

Chapter 18 Digging in with My Sister

Chapter 19 Letters from Afterward

Chapter 20 Very Special Letters

Chapter 21 Visiting Dave, Aunt Laurine, and My Parents

Chapter 22 The Green Book

Chapter 23 On to Bigger and Better Things

Chapter 24 Marching Forward—Spring 1994

Chapter 25 More Research—Archives et al.

Chapter 26 Some Light from Something Long Ago

Chapter 27 Disconnection Can Evolve to Connection

Chapter 28 Thank You Momma and Daddy

Afterword

Book Club Questions

Bibliography and Suggested Books

Acknowledgments

To Joseph Field, the devoted husband of my brilliant birth mother,

Shirley Nan Smith;

father of their children, David and Jan;

and a dedicated junior high school science teacher.

Without his compassionate involvement,

my mission in life would never have happened

in such a remarkable manner.

Introduction

This is our mother’s memoir. As an adoptee, she felt like a misfit at times, not like the rest of the kids she grew up with, other than her brother. Her curiosity and desire to look into her biological background wasn’t spurred on until her daughters entered adulthood and the need for answers surfaced.

The story she tells has had many iterations over 3 decades. This was her focus for the latter part of her life, when she was not distracted with her pursuit of acting, her puppy love, or dealing with her personal health issues. Her final draft was submitted after she was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and had a stroke. It is important to consider this when you read the book. Although we have edited her final draft and corrected as much as we could, facts we could confirm, there is much that we could not. Her memories of her childhood were crystal clear as her mind deteriorated. She had many other diagnoses and prescriptions over the last couple of decades that may or may not have had any correlation to her dementia, like ADD, for which her psychiatrist prescribed Adderall when she was 65 years old. Consequently, her behavior became erratic and volatile at times that was out of character for her.

While there is much that we could have changed in this manuscript, we have chosen not to change her story out of respect for her personality, her process, her lens and her narrative. She worked very hard on her discoveries and this book, and while we know that one may find some of the content disturbing, this is her story. It’s a wild journey of discovery when you know close to nothing in the beginning.

Mom passed away May 6th, 2020. Her vivacious, creative and absolutely unabashed desire to feel connected to all the people she encountered will live on in memories of those who knew and loved her.

We hope you appreciate her story and, if you are or know an adoptee, may be inspired to find out more too. Many things have changed since the 1940s and more adoptees are allowed more information than before.

Michelle & Jennifer

Preface

Courage doesn’t mean you don’t get afraid.

Courage means you don’t let fear stop you.

—Bethany Hamilton

You just never know what you’ll find when you begin searching for missing pieces of your life—any more than you know at the age of one what you will be when you grow up.

I had always known I was adopted. Momma always introduced me as our beautiful adopted daughter. So adoption was not an issue; it was just part of me. The thought of finding my birth mother surfaced and resurfaced, yet I pushed it away.

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What shifted me back to first gear about searching for my birth mother was a call on September 9, 1992, from my oldest daughter, Michelle.

Hey, Mom, when are you going to get rigorous about finding your birth mother?

I was stunned. Neither of my daughters had ever asked anything about my biological family. Consequently, I didn’t think they were at all interested. But this was definitely a sign of interest. Without knowing how I was going to accomplish the feat, I committed to finding her by Christmas. Even with the assistance of a nice young woman (Debbie, another Childrens Home Society adoptee who had found her birth family and worked with a private investigation firm in Oxnard), we didn’t find a trace of her by that time.

The evening after Christmas, on the way back to my cousin’s house on the beach in Ventura, I suddenly remembered a search angel from ALMA (Adoptees Liberation Movement Association) meeting I’d attended a few years before in Camarillo. I’d just put the piece of paper with her information on it in my organizer and caught a glimpse of it now and then when I was looking for something else.

Search angels help families reunite. The fees for the cost of searching and finding, when I first heard of them, I didn’t think I could afford. However, that was back in 1982 or 1983; now it was ten years later. Feeling particularly anxious when we got back to the beach house, I called Jeanne, the search angel in Santa Barbara.

Her charge depended on how anxious I was to have the facts she would expose. That was probably the most pragmatic money I ever spent. When you commit wholeheartedly to doing something, things happen.

Three days after my first call to her, Jeanne called back.

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In January 1993, I wrote an article about the discoveries I made. A man in Kotzebue came up to me in the hotel’s restaurant to say, I think you should write a book about what you found. Reading that part about your phone call made me cry!

Some others agreed with him. It was exciting, just thinking of the possibility of doing it, not knowing it would take twenty-five years.

Soon, I sold my used word processor I’d bought from a friend, and I bought a real computer—a desktop Mac. With a passion I hadn’t realized I owned, I began writing what I thought was the most exciting part thus far—a phone call to my birth mother’s home, where she had lived since 1961, the year I graduated from high school. It was such fun to write that. Then I added to that story from both ends.

Eventually, I began to wonder how long this book was going to be—although I hadn’t even come up with a title I liked. I don’t remember all the titles I tested out, but they were blah—no life to them.

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Years later, I sat in a writing class at Portland State University, where the instructor told us, A memoir is the most difficult type of book to write. A bit late for a forewarning—I was already up to my knees in skittering garter snakes writing mine, but she was right.

Reading other memoirs was most helpful, as well as interesting and stimulating. Adding many other writing classes, attending Willamette Writers Conferences summer after summer, and going to other writing seminars contributed to my learning. It’s a writer’s haven in the Portland/Vancouver area. Beautiful.

The journey to find my biological family wasn’t anything like what I’d expected. Some findings were terrible shocks that left me feeling more disheartened than ever. It took time to recover from those. However, others astonished me, and some had me elated.

At times, I felt like I’d become a detective. There were definitely some threads of mystery that required investigative skills, at least a vigorous curiosity to solve the puzzles as well as do the research. Ancestry.com added to some of the information I’d acquired from my newly found cousin, Jody Beth, who is truly a great genealogist. I found myself reading far more than usual.

I hadn’t expected to find out as much as I did when I started searching. Every adoption story I had heard at adoptee support groups was interesting and touching. I wouldn’t have thought of sharing my journey if I hadn’t realized it was so far removed from other stories. It’s complicated. Consequently, I decided to share what I had learned from my journey.

Life is a learning process. Everybody has a unique story with surprises, thrills, and coincidences. Even if you don’t think you want to search, your children may value it when they are old enough to understand what it all really means and the lessons involved. So be open with them and keep any information easily accessible. It may mean even more to them. Your story is part of their story too.

Here’s hoping that OUT OF THE BOX shows that many difficulties and challenges can change your life for the better. It may not seem like it at the time, but everything has a reason.

PART I

Beginnings

In all of us there is a hunger,

marrow deep, to know our heritage,

To know who we are, and

where we have come from.

Without this enriching knowledge,

There is a hollow yearning;

no matter what our attainments in life,

There is the most disquieting loneliness.

—Alex Haley, author of Roots

Chapter 1

A Bit of Background

Successful people maintain a positive focus in life

no matter what is going on around them.

They stay focused on their past successes

rather than their past failures,

and on the next action steps they need to take

to get them closer to the fulfillment of their goals

rather than all the other distractions that life presents to them.

~ Jack Canfield

Knowing some things about my parents’ ancestors was part of what originally made me want to look for my biological family. Some facts about my adopted family’s past are significant, explaining why my parents, Elizabeth and Lohr Bauer, adopted me.

Elizabeth Stephens was born in 1909 in Wheeling, West Virginia. Her brother, Henry, and sister, Mary, were thirteen years and eleven years older, respectively. Named Elizabeth after her mother, they called her Libby. Her mother was active in women’s rights, so big sister, Mary, helped her a lot as Libby grew up. She was the little princess of the family, with lovely brown eyes, long brown curls, and the sweetest smile.

Elizabeth ‘Libby’ finished her higher education at Boston School of Occupational Therapy, which is now part of Tufts University. While she attended BSOT, she lived in Boston for some of the time with her sister and brother-in-law and babysat their first two children, Ernest and Vicky. She also had a roommate at BSOT for a while—a wonderful artistic lady I came to know as Aunt Polly.

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Momma told me the following story when I was about fifteen because she wanted me to learn from her mistakes. In 1934, she was dating a handsome architect who impressed her when he took her furniture shopping after they had lunch together one day. Momma thought it was a very practical and romantic way to spend the afternoon and was sure that he was about to propose to her. They spent a romantic night together.

Within a month or two, she discovered she was pregnant. She told her boyfriend immediately, assuming he would be as tickled as she was and would propose to her. However, that didn’t meet his needs. Elizabeth was beautiful. She was fun too. He just wasn’t ready to think about marriage at all, let alone raising a child.

I’ll simply have five of my closest friends swear they’ve known you intimately, and we’ll let the court settle the matter, he said. Then, like the rat he was, he scuttled off to San Francisco to start his new architecture firm.

She knew her situation wouldn’t make her parents happy, as they were already dealing with challenges of growing old. She spoke to her sister and brother-in-law. They understood and knew how to handle the matter. We know a good doctor. Don’t worry about it, Libby.

They took her to see the doctor, and the abortion was completed. It wasn’t what she wanted; she’d always dreamed of having children. She loved children. Her elder sister thought it best, however. The problem was most people back then had no heart for unwed mothers. She was devastated about this guy and even more so about not being in a position to have a child.

She had years of devastating disappointments from that abortion.

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Libby and her parents moved across the United States to Orange, California, in 1935. Their first Sunday in town, they attended a tiny Episcopal church where twenty-year-old Margaret Bauer was the organist.

Decades later, Aunt Margaret told me about that day up in the choir loft. She saw them as they entered the building.

"Libby wore a white middy blouse, a dark pleated skirt, and a wide-brimmed sailor’s hat. Darn! Why don’t those folks have a daughter my age? I thought. That kid must be about sixteen.

I was looking for nice young women to introduce to my brothers-in-law, Lohr and Jeroe. Women who would make great sisters-in-law, she later confided to me. "I didn’t want to get stuck with another self-absorbed prima donna, like Aurel (her husband’s sister). So then I drove Elizabeth to choir practice and found out she was twenty-six!

I immediately told her about Jeroe, with his curly hair, cleft chin, and dimples; and Lohr, who was every bit as handsome, with dark hair, glasses, and a warm, broad smile. ‘He’s so creative, in many ways; he’s very witty, and easy to talk with. He came home from Stanford College to help Pop save the family ranch. He’s a prince of a fellow!’

Margaret invited Libby to her father-in-law’s birthday party the following Sunday. Poor Jeroe missed the family festivities because he was too sick. That was okay with Lohr, because he had eyes for Libby immediately. He knew he was going to take advantage of his older brother’s illness and use the Model A Ford the two brothers shared, in order to date her. They talked that entire afternoon—and every day thereafter, for a month and a day.

Elizabeth told Lohr that she’d had thirteen nicknames through the years and listed them. He smiled as he listened, then said, I am going to call you Elizabeth.

That was in 1935, right in the middle of the Great Depression. Elizabeth and Lohr did things like playing tennis on the public courts, borrowing the sailboat from his friend and mentor, Clarence Gustlin, who was also a concert pianist, and going for long walks together. They talked and talked and told each other everything.

One night as they drove around the Orange country roads, Lohr pulled off the road into an impressive driveway with tall stone pillars at the entrance.

I know a few people here, he told Elizabeth. She sat up quickly to tidy her hair. In a few seconds, some marble gravestones began to appear among the trees.

Oh, Lohr! she said, with a coy cuff to his upper arm.

He loved the expression on her face—her long brown eyelashes and the braid she wore around her head.

As they were driving home, his face was serious as he asked her, Do you think you’re going to need any hardware?

What in the world are you talking about, Lohr?

Well, I know some girls like big diamond rings when they are engaged. What are your thoughts along those lines, Elizabeth?

Oh! Well, the only diamond I’ve ever wanted is in my mother’s engagement ring. It’s an old mine-cut solitaire.

A month and a day after they met, they were married at the little Episcopal church in Orange. My future aunts, Margaret, Aurel, and Judith, were the bridesmaids. Clarence Gustlin (the concert pianist) played the organ. Future Uncles Jeroe, Merrill, and Henry were groomsmen. Elizabeth wore her May queen dress that she wore for May Day when she was in college and added thirty-five cents’ worth of mullein for a veil tacked onto her faux pearl Juliet crown. My future father wore his dark brown suit. They invited neighbors, relatives, and members from the little Episcopal church. Most people had economical weddings back in the days of the Great Depression. Theirs was über thrifty.

For their honeymoon, they camped out for three days in bedrolls on the Gillette estate. They had fresh grapefruit, compliments of King Gillette too! Their first year as man and wife, they lived with Elizabeth’s parents so Elizabeth could help out with her mother. Lohr worked with her father, helping her brother, Henry, with his orange juice enterprise.

Her mother passed away within a year or so, so Elizabeth and Lohr moved up to Saticoy where the family business, G. I. Bauer and Sons, had started in 1929. There wasn’t much there—a large, corrugated sheet metal building across the back half of an acre and a little one-bedroom cabin of unpainted cement, with brown casement windows.

They first arrived to Saticoy at night. Momma could hardly wait to see what everything looked like the next day. She hopped out of bed early to peek out the little window in the front door. There was nothing but weeds, alkali dirt, trash—and more alkali dirt, compliments of the disastrous Saint Francis Flood in 1929. There was an irrigation ditch on the south side of the barbed wire fence, then an empty lot with more weeds. To the south was an alley, with a dirty garage and heaps of trash. On the corner was an old wooden Catholic church, painted white years before.

It was disgusting to the winsome bride from Wheeling, West Virginia. Tears were spilling, but she quickly pulled herself together by saying, For better or for worse … for better or worse … and tiptoed back to bed.

She certainly wasn’t about to give up on Lohr Bauer. Things can change, especially when a woman is committed to a man, to his dreams, and to her dreams. Good things can happen. Bad things can happen too. The next few years, tubal pregnancies and a miscarriage or two proved that the abortion procedure Elizabeth had in 1934 negatively affected her ability to carry a fetus to full term. It was her worst nightmare.

She still wanted children—wanted to be a mother, whatever it took. It took her three years to talk Lohr into adopting a baby. There were three more years of the adoption process. They had been together almost seven years when that special call finally came from the Children’s Home Society. Momma, Daddy, Aunt Margaret & Uncle Merrill moved to Long Beach during the war where Daddy worked as a mechanic on planes for a period of time.

Chapter 2

The First Few Months

For most children … their narrative is as much

a part of them as their shadow; it develops

with them over the years and cannot be torn away.

Unless, of course, they are adopted.

—Betty Jean Lifton, Journey of the Adopted Self

According to my adoptive parents, even though my birthday is April 2, 1943, my life truly began on May 21, 1943—the day they drove from Long Beach to Los Angeles to pick me up at the Children’s Home Society’s (CHS) nursery.

The first three weeks, I waited in the Glendale Memorial Hospital nursery until a bassinet was available at the adoption agency. Then Children’s Home Society boarded me for four weeks before calling my parents. In those crowded nurseries, many World War II babies started out life according to the OBGYN doctor: Don’t pick up an infant when it cries—as long as it’s dry and fed. My how science has changed that directive over the years.

My folks had been awaiting the call since the last visit from a social worker. She told them they would be hearing from them any day now. Although they were on a waiting list for a telephone, the phone company hadn’t delivered one yet. So Lohr and Elizabeth gave CHS Aunt Margaret’s phone number.

The call came when Aunt Margaret was washing dishes. With soap suds up to her elbows, she grabbed a dish towel and answered it. Hello? … No, this is Margaret Bauer, her sister-in-law. We’re fielding calls for them until the phone company gives them a telephone. They live just around the corner from us. … I see. … Yes. … I certainly will deliver that information. … Oh, they are going to be so excited! … Yes, ma’am, today at four. … Yes, indeed. And thank you!

Years later, Aunt Margaret told me that she was so excited she practically flew out of the door, with her youngest, Chris, on her hip, to run around to Elizabeth and Lohr’s little bungalow on Seburn Avenue. No one answered the doorbell, so she ran around to the backyard, where she found her sister-in-law.

Elizabeth! Children’s Home Society has a baby girl for you! You can pick her up at four o’clock today!

Elizabeth’s arms flew up, and peas and shells flew from hell to breakfast.

Today? Oh, Margaret! I don’t have anything for a baby yet. What am I going to do?

Don’t worry, Libby. I’ll just make some calls around to neighbors and ask them to get the word out to other families too.

Daddy was waiting in front with a few others. Momma slid over the bench seat to the passenger side as he walked around to the driver’s side.

I have a wonderful surprise! she said. Today’s the day we’ve been waiting for! CHS called and said they have a baby girl for us. We can pick her up today at four o’clock.

Yeah. But I need to pick up some new pants for work! said Lohr. "My good suit pants are taking a beating from having to wear them every day. Today’s payday, so I really need to go to either Monkey Ward’s or Penney’s now. We can go get the baby tomorrow."

Elizabeth couldn’t believe what she was hearing from her beloved. "Lohr Bauer, you listen to me! This is something I have waited years for. If we don’t go get her today, they might decide we don’t really want a baby. We are going to get our baby girl—today! We can get your work pants tomorrow."

With one look at her face, they got in the car and headed straight for L.A. to the CHS nursery. When they arrived, Momma had her foot out on the ground before Daddy even had the hand brake set.

Once inside the building, Momma expected the nurse to hand me to her, so she put her purse and the bag of hand-me-downs on a chair and knocked on the nursery door. A lady in white came out to welcome them and checked their names and identification. I’ll be out in a jiffy with your special little parcel, she said as she returned to the nursery.

When the nurse brought you back, Momma said, I put my arms out to accept you, but she put you into Daddy’s arms instead. Daddy looked down at you and practically crooned. He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. You smiled and cooed at each other, and your smiling father said, ‘Well, I think we should take this pretty little girl home with us.’

Momma said she reached into the hand-me-down bag for something to dress me in, explaining that the neighbors had given them to her to help her out.

Oh, no, said Daddy. No, we can’t take this little girl home in those garments. They’re all stained. Let’s buy her a few pretty things at the shop here.

They drove over to show their baby girl off to her father. My Granddaddy Stephens knew they were expecting, so when he saw their car drive up, he knew immediately what was happening. He opened his screen door, held out his arms, and said, Let me hold my pretty new granddaughter!

Like most adopted children, I loved hearing the day we got you story, especially when the nurse handed me to Daddy instead of Momma, and how Daddy bought his new baby girl pretty new things to wear. Splurging was not the norm for my dear daddy.

Chapter 3

Two and a Half and Up

Very little is needed to make a happy life;

it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

~Marcus Aurelius

When World War II ended in August 1945, Daddy was anxious to move back to the family business in Saticoy, G.I. Bauer & Sons, Mfg.

On the way to our funny little home (as Momma called it) in Saticoy, we stopped at Uncle Jeroe’s in Oxnard and spent the night. Uncle Jeroe, Aunt Liz, and their four pretty daughters with curly blonde hair lived in a lovely two-story Cape Cod home on their hundred-acre ranch on Howe Road. It was beautiful—complete with a circular driveway, lots of trees, a swimming pool, and a large playhouse. A huge hammock was suspended between the two largest trees, and a tire swing hung from the biggest tree. It was heavenly.

Much too soon, it was time to leave for Saticoy. It wasn’t a long drive, only about eight miles, and I was curious to see our funny little home that Momma had been talking about. I just wasn’t happy about leaving my newly acquainted four girl cousins.

Daddy was anxious to see what happened during his three-year absence. He’d heard from friends that windows had been broken in the shop, and tools stolen—hence, his concern. When we reached Saticoy, he turned off of Wells Road into a gravel driveway.

Momma wrote in my baby book that I leaned forward, took one look, and said, "Oh no, Daddy, not here!"

That’s probably when Momma worked some of her magic (aka, child psychology), describing to her talkative two-and-a-half-year-old all the fun things there were for us to do together. Planting flowers and trees was fun.

Over the next year or so, we created a mini farm in between our house and Daddy’s shop. Soon we had flowers, trees, fresh fruit, and lots of fresh vegetables. Saticoy friends from their couples group and church had missed my parents when they were down in Long Beach, so they were eager to share plant starts, roots, and bulbs from their own gardens, which grew quickly. Acacia trees and a weeping willow came from our family dentist, Dr. Penfield.

The most exciting addition to our mini farm was a Nubian nanny goat my parents got as soon as possible because CHS had told them, Adopted babies often have problems with their tummies, and goat’s milk is just what they need.

She was dark brown with white splotches and long, floppy ears, but Momma said we couldn’t just call her Spot, like Daddy wanted to, so we named her Mrs. Goat. Friends came to help Daddy build the goat pen—sort of like a little barn raising. Everything about having a goat was wonderful, especially when Momma squirted Mrs. Goat’s warm milk directly into my open mouth. When she held me on the goat’s back, I could ride her. Momma took a picture when the goat pen was finished, with all the friends and relatives there. She kept it in my baby book.

Mrs. Goat gave birth to triplets both times we had her bred. I was so tickled to see those kids jumping around with each other and their mother. They were